Excitements and Challenges

This is the third day into the Andela Self Learning software boot camp. The experience is exciting and at the same time challenging, but what is life without excitements and challenges. The exciting part comes down to the implementation of concepts you know they exists in theory. From security to simple interfaces meant for the users of the application. The integration of several systems together while working on a project is fascinating. For example; the correlation between GitHub and pivotal tracker, GitHub, Travis_CI and Coveralls and VScode and Git.

Slack as a collaboration system allows one to achieve a lot from teammates’ helps. Learning is made simple and gradual. Each minute and hour, you get to have a better understanding to what you did know or learn what you didn’t know. A very wide community of coding enthusiast inspire each and every key press when coding a solution to a problem. GitHub as a platform offers a lot of knowledge and solutions to problems, from simple to complex codes, forum like solutions and most of all, allowing versioning.

Challenge 2 entailed flask application creation. The requirements were to come up with an application that follows stipulated development environments and functional requirements. The application grows day by day, with excitement and again, with challenges. Installing and Setting up python, Pylint and flask have been relatively straight forward, in my opinion. Versioning is made simple using VScode and its ability to work with Git. It is at implementing TDDs, a concept I knew existed in theory, but had never implemented it, that I hit a blocker. I wondered through the internet for a beginner instruction to a novice. Finally, I was able to create a few simple tests for my application using the Unittest class.

The next step was to implement continuous integration. To have my builds checked when a commit is made to any of my files. The process was fairly understood. Issues come when there is a slow internet connection. But I was able to have it done and working. Need I have to say I got a build passing badge, could be happier seeing the builds turn green. I must say, I did not like seeing the red and yellow on my builds.

Coveralls check the test coverage of the code. I took note and this was a blocker too. I had everything set up, my builds are showing at the coveralls dashboard but could not get a coverage badge. I got back to the internet and I realized it was an issue veteran developers were facing. I am still at it though, hopefully I get a break through.

Lastly, deploying the few codes I had to Heroku server. I followed the steps to the letter but always got “Application error”. Apparently, my problem is with the dynos. I have tried several fixes, manual and CLI command solutions but again, am still at it.

Enough of the excitements. The challenges are clear and evident especially when it comes to internet connectivity. It is through the internet that one can get resources and most help. All in all, the excitements out way the challenges.